We have recently rolled out a Facebook page to keep the general public informed about events, post photos, etc. We will still keep this website active as a resource for club members, but the Facebook page will allow a wider audience to learn about public events because it will automatically be pushed to their wall if they have ‘Liked’ the page.

The last couple of nights, I have been teased with a thin Moon and clear skies, but bad winds. Tonight the sky was still mostly clear, but the winds had died down considerably, so I decided to get in a bit of observing while I could.

Venus and the thin crescent Moon were near each other in the sky tonight, making for a breathtaking sight. I ended up taking several photos of the pair.

Moon
Formed during a large meteor impact, Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) is over 345 miles in diameter. In 1969, the Soviet Luna 15 probe crashed here. Tonight, dawn had arrived on the large feature, with its rim showing up well past the terminator. This gave the Moon the appearance of the Death Star.

Another notable feature on the Moon tonight was seeing sunlight glistening off a few lunar peaks beyond the terminator near the south pole.

Venus
Appearing as beautiful to the naked eye on Earth as its namesake, Venus is one of the most hostile environments in the entire solar system. The high temperatures from being near the Sun and a runaway greenhouse effect have heated up the surface to around 900 degrees Fahrenheit. This has created a thick, cloud-covered atmosphere of primarily carbon dioxide, with traces of sulfuric acid in the clouds.

Using my telescope at high power, I was able to detect its gibbous phase. I could have used a filter to cut down on the brightness and see it more clearly, but didn’t bother with it tonight.

Jupiter
I was still waiting for the twilight to darken into night, so I turned my telescope towards the king of the planets. Jupiter did not disappoint. The Great Red Spot (GRS) was easily visible, as were several cloud bands. The GRS is a huge storm in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter that has been around since at least 1665, and is over 18,000 miles wide (two or three Earths would fit inside it!). A narrow white band of clouds was seen separating the GRS from the Southern Equatorial Belt (SEB), making it appear to pop even more.

Also crossing Jupiter’s disk was Ganymede. Although I couldn’t detect the moon, I was easily able to make out its shadow. Seeing both the GRS and a shadow transit got me so excited, I ran inside to tell my wife to take a look. She was also impressed.

NGC 2392 (Eskimo Nebula)
Planetary nebulae are the result of a sun-like star that has spent all of the hydrogen in its core and the outer layers are ejected into space while the core contracts. This will be the fate of our own Sun in a few billion years. While a horrible cataclysm to have to try to survivie, from a distance, it is often a beautiful sight.

NGC 2392 is no exception. At low power, it looks like a fuzzy star near another, brighter star. Increasing the magnification to 122x revealed a bright central star with a wide circle of nebulosity surrounding it. Using averted vision, I could begin to detect a few wisps of detail, but nothing definite. I’ve seen it look a lot better from darker skies.

NGC 2420
This open cluster was in the neighborhood of the Eskimo, so I thought I would take a peek. It is small and not that bright, appearing as some background glow with a sprinkling of stars. I kicked up the power to 203x, and a few more stars began to resolve, making it look better, but still not that impressive.

M104 (Sombrero Galaxy)
By pointing the scope about halfway along a line from Porrima to Beta Corvi, it is easy to find this galaxy. Right away, I could tell that galaxies were going to be hard to find tonight. Although it was obvious even at low power, it didn’t pop out like it usually does. The galaxy appeared as a long thin line with a bright central core. The famous dust lane was barely detectable, even at 81x.

Leo Triplet
To confirm my suspicions, I pointed the scope at the Leo Triplet. M65 and M66 were visible, but barely. I was completely unable to spot NGC 3628, even though I have observed it on several other occasions.

M53
Deciding to give up on galaxies this evening, I thought I’d try a globular cluster. M53 was nearby in Coma Berenices. This was more difficult to locate than I expected, because with my light pollution, none of the Coma Berenices stars were visible with the naked eye. I ended up using Porrima and Vindemiatrix as pointing stars to find it. The cluster was small, so I kicked up the power to 122x, which offered the best view (203x was mushy). The cluster appeared as a round spot of nebulosity that quickly faded out to the edges. A few stars were resolved at the edge of the cluster.

The wind was really starting to pick back up at this point. To test the conditions, I put the scope back on Jupiter. The GRS was now nearly centered on the planet, and Ganymede had just passed the edge of the disk and appeared as a bright little bulge on the side of Jupiter. The image was wiggling wildly in the wind, so I decided to pack it in for the night.

This is a different sort of observing report than what I usually post…

This evening at the college where I work, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell gave a free lecture about how she discovered pulsars in the 1960s. It was a great talk about how she was doing her PhD thesis and had to build her own radio telescope to look for quasars, and discovered something else that was just as fascinating.

Without going into the lecture in great detail, here are some of the highlights (for me):

* She had to contend with a lot of bias against women. Case in point: even though it was her data and her telescope and her discovery, her thesis mentor ended up getting a Nobel Peace Prize and she got barely a mention.

* Upon receiving their Master’s Degree in astrophysics, graduates were given toolkits to help them in their later career, including wire cutters and a screwdriver.

* Radio astronomy was only about 20 years old and far from mainstream, and in order to complete her thesis on quasars, she had to go out and build her own radio telescope. It was about 57 tennis courts in size, and took her 2 of her 3 years in the doctorate program just to get it completed. She only had about 6 months of data collected before she graduated.

* She had no access to computers, and the telescope plotted signals with an ink pen on rolls of graph paper that had to be changed out every 20 minutes. It completed one pass of the sky every 4 days, and each pass took up 121 meters of paper. She sorted each roll of paper by its declination and pored over every centimeter of it.

* Whenever she saw something strange, she had to pore over plots of the identical parts of the sky to see if it was also present 4 days before.

* Several other people *almost* discovered pulsars first, but didn’t recognize what they were seeing and/or dismissed it as some manmade phenomenon.

* Since her thesis was almost due when the discovery was made, her mentor told her it was too late to change topics and she had to continue writing a paper about quasars, but cheated a bit and put a footnote about her discovery in the paper.
Dame Jocelyn was a great speaker and talked about hard science in an easy-to-understand way, and the talk was also sprinkled with a lot of humor. A great evening that ended much too early.

After being socked in by clouds for the last week (without seeing much of the needed rain), the Sunday sky cleared and a group of six of us showed up at the Gott Observatory to give our photon-deprived brains a good healthy dose of starlight.

As I arrived, a visiting farm dog came by to see what we were up to. He was very friendly and stayed with us the entire evening. He was well-behaved for the most part, but did have a tendency to try to lick your face whenever you would sit at the telescope and bend over to look through the eyepiece. No eyepieces were buried in the dirt, no telescopes were “marked” as dog territory, and when a few coyotes showed up in a nearby field (or were they chupacabras?) his growls gave us comfort in having a safe night of observing, so for me at least, he was a welcome addition to the group.

One person was a first-time visitor to our group, so of course, the rest of us were happily showing him the gems of the sky. He was soaking it all in and asking lots of great questions, so I think we’ll be seeing more of him at future events.

Strangely enough, everyone brought reflectors tonight, ranging in size from 6 to 12 inches. We starhopped to many perennial favorites, including the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter. We also saw highlights in Canis Major (h3945, M41, NGC-2359), Orion (M42/43, Rigel), Gemini (M35, NGC-2158, NGC-2392, Castor), Auriga (M36), Taurus (Hyades, Pleiades), Cancer (M44, Iota), Perseus (Double Cluster), Leo (M65/66 Triplet), Canes Venatici (M51), and Ursa Major (M81/M82 Triplet, M97, M108, M101). Rather than make this report any longer than it already is, I will only go over a few of the more memorable (to me) sights of the night.

As darkness descended, the pairing of the Moon and Venus stole everyone’s attention. With the naked eye, the earthshine on the Moon was incredible, and the darker the sky became, the more surreal it looked. By blocking out the thin sunlit crescent, the top half of the moon looked similar to what you would see during a lunar eclipse, except it retained a gray color. Very cool!

Through the telescope, Venus was very bright, but its gibbous phase was distinctly visible. The Moon showed a lot of craters that popped out in 3D.
h3945
After showing the newcomer the big obvious targets (Venus, Moon, Jupiter, M42), I showed him the beautiful double star h3945 in Canis Major. He already knew many of the constellations, so I showed him more precisely where it was located by letting him see where my Telrad was pointed. We agreed this was a flea on the dog’s back.

The double itself did not disappoint. He was impressed at the obvious double nature of the star. Then I told him to look closer and tell me what colors he saw, or whether both were white. He took a second look in the eyepiece and reported the same orange and blue colors that I normally see. I think this exercise actually made him get more enjoyment out of observing some of the later and fainter objects, because he was already learning to observe carefully and soak everything in, rather than just take a quick peek.
NGC 2359 (Thor’s Helmet)
One of my nightly targets tonight was Thor’s Helmet. I cannot see it at all from my backyard and wanted to take advantage of the darker skies to try to nab it. The southern skies at Gott are hardly pristine, as the sprawling city of Lubbock lies only about 10 miles to the south, but it was still a lot better than what I could see from my house.

Unfiltered, I “thought” I could see something very dim in about the right spot, but I threw in an O-III to make sure. Pop! Now I could easily see the half-circle helmet shape, but the horns still eluded me. Still, it was larger than I thought it would be, and even as dim as it was, I could make out a few details within the nebula. I can’t wait to see this from a truly dark site.

NGC 2158
I also enjoyed trying to tease some detail out of NGC 2158, an open cluster very near to M35 in Gemini. at low power, it was detectable as a hazy smudge off to the side of M35. I was able to squeeze out 203x out of my telescope and could barely start making out a few faint stars within the haze. Not that impressive by itself, but considering that NGC-2158 is about twice the distance away as M35, it makes for a cool comparison.

M97 and M108
Using one of the other club members’ 24mm Panoptic in my 8″, I was barely able to squeeze M97 and M108 into the same field of view. This made for a great sight, seeing a large planetary nebula and an edge-on galaxy at the same time. Although at this low power, no real details could be seen, it still was a great image.
Everyone had a great time and we reluctantly started heading home around 11:30 as we all had to go back to work the next morning.

Tonight was clear and unseasonably warm. And with the Moon not scheduled to arrive until after 10pm, it looked to be a promising night for observing. A group from the SPAC decided to meet out at the Gott Observatory to take advantage.

Most of the evening was spent going from favorite to favorite, comparing the views in different telescopes. We saw dozens of objects throughout the night, but I am only going to list some of my favorites here. They are in the approximate order that I observed them:

COMET 2014 (Lovejoy)
I wanted to make sure I took a final peek at Comet Lovejoy before it faded out of sight once again. The comet appeared large and round, with just a tinge of color left in it. The best part, though, was that the sky was dark enough to see parts of the tail, which I had not yet been able to see from my backyard.

M42 (Great Orion Nebula)
Although the nebula looked great as always, with dark green, billowy filaments of gas and dust fanning out across the entire field of view, we spent most of the time concentrating on how many stars we could see in the Trapezium cluster nestled inside. Five stars were easily visible most of the time through my 8″ dob, but in moments of good seeing, I could make out the sixth star.

DOUBLE CLUSTER
This is always a treat, but through Jerry’s 10″ dob with 100° 20mm eyepiece, it was flat-out gorgeous. The large clusters fit nicely in the field of view, with hundreds of stars visible.

M31 (Great Andromeda Galaxy)
The Great Andromeda Galaxy looked great tonight, with its spiral arms stretching out for miles, or rather, light years. The most fantastic view of it tonight, however was again with Jerry’s 100° eyepiece, where its two companion galaxies, M32 and M110 could also be easily seen within the same field of stars.

H3945 (Canis Major)
Collin pointed us to this pretty double star, nicknamed the “Winter Albireo” after its famous counterpart in the summer sky. One star was a deep orange and the companion was a medium blue, making a striking sight in even a small telescope. The stars were far enough apart to be easily split in a small telescope, yet close enough together to be visually appealing as a double star. This was definitely added to my “favorites list” tonight.

FLAME NEBULA (Orion)
This was the first time I had seen this awesome nebula. My first view was through the TTU 18″. After nudging the bright nearby star Alnitak out of the field of view, it was obvious, shaped a lot like a Christmas tree and even appearing green, with a dark interior.

JUPITER
The King of the Planets was definitely the highlight of the night. It was absolutely fantastic. Many cloud bands were visible, and the Great Red Spot was obvious as well. During moments of good seeing when the atmosphere settled down, the details were incredible.

But even Jupiter was about to be outdone by his own court. The Galilean moons twirled around the planet tonight, each one easily identifiable by their slight differences in size. Callisto appeared larger than either Io or Europa, and Ganymede was larger still. Through the 18″, you could even discern that Io was slightly paler and more of a creamy color than Europa.

Most of the evening featured Io (and its shadow) crossing Jupiter’s disk. The shadow appeared as a very tiny black dot crossing between the equatorial bands of Jupiter. As the moon approached the edge of the disk, Io became visible as a bright dot in front of Jupiter, with its black shadow following right behind. Around 11:30pm, Io completed its journey across the face of Jupiter and eclipsed Europa. It was interesting to see two moons merge into one and then split apart again. As they came together, the two moons looked like what Collin termed a snowman.

Shortly after this, you could see Europa become noticeably dimmer for several minutes as it slipped behind Io’s shadow. The dance of the moons was lovely to behold and made a great finale to a wonderful night under the stars.

I arrived late, about 7:15, and too late to catch Mercury and Venus, now setting low in the west, but Maurice Clark, Scott Harris and Gary Leiker had seen them, and Mark Smith may have arrived early enough to catch them, too. Dr. Clark had his Jaegers 5” short tube achromat, an almost 50 year old scope. When not imaging, Dr. Clark paired the scope with a Williams Optics 28mm UWAN. More on this later. Gary and Scott had the 12” dob, while Mark had an 80mm achromat. I brought my C102GT, a 97mm clear aperture F/10.3 achromat. Gary used his Meade HD60’s more the most part, occasionally borrowing my ES 28mm 68*. I used the ES 28mm 68*, the Pan 24, and TeleVue Nagler T6’s 7 & 13mm.

Of course, the first item on my agenda, and even theirs although they’d already seen it, was Comet Lovejoy. That night, the 11th, in Taurus and a fuzzy naked eye 4th magnitude “star”. Dr. Clark noted how fast it was moving, and indeed it clearly had changed positions from the first time I saw it to further north & east on its way toward Aries and Triangulum, but from the “legs” deeper into the corpus of the Bull this evening. Dr. Clark snapped off a few shots.

We looked at a lot of things. Dr. Clark getting Gary and Scott to bag some Eridani galaxies, while I worked on the Orion Nebula & the Trapezium, having more luck, surprisingly, with my 13mm T6 vs. my 7mm one.

Without a doubt, however, the highlights of the evening were the jaw dropping widefield views the Jaeger’s 5″ together with the WO UWAN 28mm. Simply spectacular! Dr. Clark had been imaging earlier, so the scope wasn’t available for viewing until later. He had to reconfigure the focuser a bit to get the diagonal in place after removing the CCD, but, man, was it worth it! The 3.62 degree true field of view combined with the light gathering of a 5″ unobstructed primary, the rather perfect 5.6mm exit pupil, 22.68x magnification and the pristine Emma skies came together for an optic nerve nirvana. You’ve GOT to see it to believe it, folks. M31, the Andromeda galaxy, spread on forever and ever, amen! Obviously attended by both M32 and M110, seeing its galactic wings go on in a 3.6 degree field is just stunning! M33 lay in a beautiful field of Milky Way stars, faint arms unfurling. Maurice showed us the “pointing stick” of stars directed at the Double Cluster, stars one would never associate, could never associate, in a lesser field. And of course, comet Lovejoy’s long ion tail was spectacular flaring off this temporal inner Solar System interloper.

Now Gary’s 12″ did a nice job of pointing out M31′s dust lane, and with my 28mm 68*, we could just put M32 and M110 in the same field. This level of detail is nice, and it was satisfying to have both widefield star scape and exacting detail on the same observing field.

Around 9:30 the winds picked up, and the warm 60* sunny day of Sunday gave way to the wintry, freezing fog of Monday. Just before this, I noticed the flickering and shaking of Rigel, which I was able to split, just barely, stars gyrating madly in the eyepiece, photons tussled about by the upper atmospheric disturbances that soon begat our much lower atmospheric ground winds. We packed up and headed home, a night of stargazing that I will not forget, widefield heavenly vistas running through my head even to this writing.

As Snoopy might write, “it was a dark and starry night.” And I would add chilly. Last night, we had 11 people braving the cool weather to come out to the Gott Observatory at different times during the night. We had some regular observers: Tom C, Jerry, Gary, Scott, Mark, and Collin, as well as some visitors: Ram, Tommy, and his children Nathan, Oscar, and Olivia.

Gary readies his 12″ Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope as the sun sinks below the horizon.

There were a few clouds here and there during the evening, but never enough to bother the observing. The Milky Way looked stunning, stretching all the way from setting Sagittarius to rising Perseus. We jumped from object to object throughout the night, and went back to a few objects more than once, so I won’t put things in the order we observed them, but rather group them by constellation.

ANDROMEDA

M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, was spectacular. Even though not many details were seen, we could see the spiral arms stretching out for seemingly forever. With our widest field eyepieces, we could also fit both M32 and M110 into the same field, which looked awesome. M32 was a bright, tiny, and almost circular patch of light, and M110 was much fainter, but large and elliptical with a stellar core. The best (and widest) view of these 3 were in Collin’s brand new Celestron 6-inch Newtonian reflector.

Also in the Andromeda constellation, we took a peek at NGC-7662, commonly known as the Blue Snowball. Through my 8″ telescope, it lived up to its name, looking like a fuzzy, pale blue ball of light.

Another delight in Andromeda was NGC-891, a large, dim, edge-on spiral galaxy. I was unable to find it in my 8″ (I may not have been looking in quite the right place), but it did show up nicely in Jerry’s 10″ and looked gorgeous in the 12″ SCT, where the dust lanes were quite visible as well.

AURIGA

M37 is a rich open cluster which was a crowd-pleaser. Dozens and perhaps as many as 100 stars were visible with varying brightnesses. A few of the brighter ones appeared to be yellow stars.

CASSIOPEIA

The kids (and adults) enjoyed seeing NGC-457 (The Owl Cluster). The two brightest stars in the cluster resemble the eyes of an owl, and other stars in the cluster are loosely shaped as outstretched wings and tail. I personally think the cluster looks more like E.T., but most kids nowadays have no idea who that is. Am I really that old?

We also wanted to find the Bubble Nebula (NGC-7635) tonight. It lies near the much-easier-to-find M52, so we stopped there first. M52 is a small open cluster that is so circular, it almost looks like a globluar cluster. Dozens of tiny stars could be seen, with the brightest star near one edge.

We found NGC-7635 nearby. I could see a nice arc of nebulosity, but was unable to see the entire bubble.

I also took a peek at NGC-663, an irregular-shaped open cluster. It has a couple of bright star pairs that make it interesting.

CYGNUS

Whenever Cygnus is visible, no stargazing session would be complete without looking at Beta Cyngi, commonly known as Albireo. This double star is stunning, with a bright blue component and an even brighter yellow star.

Jerry found NGC-6826, the Blinking Nebula, in his 10″ dob. It was oval with a central star that appears to blink in and out if you look away. It did not have this effect with me, but others saw it and were impressed.

But my favorite in Cygnus tonight was the Veil Nebula. It was easily visible when using O-III filters. Although the portion of the Veil with the star (NGC-6960) was brighter, we all preferred the NGC-6992/5 section as it showed a lot of filamentation and detail.

Another great open cluster in Cygnus is NGC-7039. Through Jerry’s 10″ dob, hundreds of stars were visible, most of a similar brightness. At one edge was a faint patch of nebulosity, which we later determined to be the planetary nebula NGC-7048. This nebula was first discovered using a 31.5″ telescope, so seeing it in a 10″ dob (even though we were using an O-III filter), was incredible.

PERSEUS

Throughout the evening, I kept taking a peek at Algol. It is an eclipsing binary star that dims approximately every 3 days as the fainter star moves in front of (from our vantage point) the brighter star. It was scheduled to eclipse tonight while we were out observing, so I kept watching its brightness in relation to other stars. As the evening progressed, you could tell it had definitely dimmed when compared to nearby stars.

Another widefield favorite is the Double Cluster (NGC-884/NGC-869). Dozens of stars centered around two cores are visible in the telescope, with a smattering of brighter stars.

One real treat tonight was getting to view NGC-1499, the California Nebula. An H-Beta filter was required to see it at all, and even then, in Jerry’s 10″, it appeared as a very large and extremely faint nebulosity surrounding a host of stars in the Milky Way.

PEGASUS

A great globular cluster, M15, was visible tonight in Pegasus. I like to call it the Hedge Apple Cluster, because of its proximity to the winged horse’s mouth. Many stars were resolved in a tight little ball with a stellar core.

SCUTUM

Before it sunk too low in the western sky, I pointed my 8″ at M11, the Wild Duck Cluster. To this day, I cannot see the shape of a duck or flock of ducks in this cluster, but it is nevertheless a pretty sight. It contains dozens of finely resolved bright stars with one really bright star towards one edge.

TAURUS

M45, the Pleiades, is another one of those celestial objects I have to look at every time I see it in the sky. Several stars in this stunning open cluster are visible to the naked eye, but through binoculars or a telescope with a wide field of view, it is simply breathtaking. Many of the brighter stars, to me, form a pattern resembling that of the Apollo lunar lander.

The Hyades is another naked-eye star cluster in Taurus. There aren’t a lot of members, but it is interesting because it contains 3 pairs of bright stars arranged in a lovely hexagon pattern.

Although low in the sky, we also looked at M1, the . It was a large oval of medium brightness. In my 8″ dob, details weren’t apparent, but just knowing that it is the remnant of a star exploding 1000 years ago is awe-inspiring.

While English knights were storming the French coast of Normandy, Chinese astronomers were staring in wonder at this mysterious “new star” that was visible even in daylight for a few weeks. Now, all that’s left is an ever-expanding mass of cooling gases that we call the Crab Nebula. Wow!

At one point during the evening, being told she would be attending a telescope party, little Olivia declared, “this sure isn’t much of a party!” But after seeing all these treasures last night, I would have to disagree with her. Despite the increasing wind, the cooling temperatures, and the increasing dew, it was a great night at the Gott!

Last night’s late-forming clouds and wind may have stopped SPAC from having a good time at Gott last night, but you can never keep a good astronomer down. Sometimes we get so caught up in looking for dark, starry nights, we forget all about the closest star to Earth — the Sun. Right now, we are in the midst of a lot of solar activity, so if you have a telescope with a properly-equipped solar filter, it is a great time to take a peek at Ol’ Sol. Pictured below is a snapshot I took through my telescope this afternoon. Several sunspot groups are visible in the photo, but the image doesn’t capture all the detail visible with the naked eye, including different temperature zones, granulation, and convection.

Keeping with tradition, I arrived late at the Gott Observatory Saturday night, about an hour after sunset, around 9:20 or so. Everyone was already set up with their scopes observing. Gary and Scott had Gary’s 12″ solid tube Orion dob. I recalled looking thru Gary’s Meade 5000 30mm UWA and 18mm Meade HD eyepieces. Jerry Hatfield had his Orion XT10i on an Orion dobstand, with ES 8.8mm 82*, 20mm ES 68*, and 20mm ES 100* eyepieces, that I was aware I looked through. Tom Campbell had his Discovery 8″ dob with 10 and 25mm plossls, while Dan Roe had his trusty C9.25. Kalana Pothuwila had his C8. I think he did some visual observing, but noticed a camera on the eyepiece end of his SCT most of the time. Mark Smith showed up long after me (10:30-ish?) and set up something, looked like a camera on a tripod, but I never went over there to look through an eyepiece so am ignorant of exactly what he brought out. It didn’t bite anyone, though, so that was a blessing. And speaking of biting, although I managed to swat a few off me, the mosquitoes were relatively absent. I had brought some DEET enhanced OFF, figuring I’d need to douse myself with it after Thursday’s rain, but was spared the trouble (and smell) by the relative benign degree of infestation.

Saturn and Mars were already low by the time I got set up, which many noted, myself included, seemed to take an awfully long time. Not that a lot of my stuff didn’t come in handy, the laser pointer, the S&T Pocket Atlas, but still, I seemed to make setting up a simple alt-az refractor as laborious and time consuming as possible. At least I’m good at something.

Later, after we had finished and were jawing with local astronomy prof and Aussie Dr. Maurice Clark, he lamented his bad luck with cantankerous equipment, forgetting things, etc., this evening. My own bad luck came quickly during setup, when my Stellarvue Red Dot Finder (http://www.buytelescopes.com/stellarvue-f1001-red-dot-finder) wouldn’t work. The next day, I replaced the battery and it still didn’t work; put the old one back in, and it came right up. Ha! So my evening began from the substantial handicap of non-functioning basic equipment. Great! Fortunately, my 50mm RA finder worked just fine, and I had ‘er aligned on my C102GT in no time.

The autumnal 5-and-a-half-day-old moon was sufficient to remove a lot of contrast from the sky, but its slendor figure in the west was not enough to obliterate our dark skies, the Milky Way quite visible from the north up through Cassiopeia, across the zenith at Cygnus, and down through Aquila and Scutum and onwards south. The City of Lubbock, from our northerly locale, did its best to destroy the Milky Way as one meandered down to Sagittarius, but it was still visible, if somewhat washed out down there, but it’s always this way at the Gott.

As usual, Jerry Hatfield’s Xt10i put up eye-popping spectacles one after the other. Doesn’t hurt that Jerry’s an absolute Cracker Jack putting various beautiful celestial eye candy in the eyepiece as fast as Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. But the combination of Jerry’s God given talent for finding things (land and sky — you should see his dragon fly photographic collection!), one fantastic mirror, and some splendid ES eyepieces, not to mention his dobstand delivering views from a no-hunch necessary, ergonomic position was continuously inspiring through the night.

But there is, always, strength in numbers, and the single most spectacular find of the night came from the eyepiece of Tom Campell’s Discovery dob with a simple 25mm Plossl eyepiece — Hershel’s Garnet Star flanked by Comet Jacques! None of us were aware of this conjunction on August 30th, coincidentally my good friend Neale Pearson’s 84th birthday, but there she blowed! Thank God Tom had the foresight to put this gem into his eyepiece, one of THE coolest astronomical pairings of 2014, for sure!

We looked at many a thing. Here’s what I recall, in as close to some semblance of order as I recollect, which most certainly is not accurate, but mostly what you who weren’t there will have to go on …

The moon (Jerry noted the beautiful lava flow wall visible across the equitorial Mare near the terminator)

Looking through Jerry’s dob as I set up my refractor, and loaned him my 2″ O-3 filter, he found 1st the Veil Nebula (NGC 6992/6960 in Cygnus). This was quite nice, and I enjoyed the view, if not as contrast rich as I’ve seen before on moonless nights. Next up was the North American Nebula (NGC 7000). Honestly, I could only see smudges, and couldn’t make out North America or Mexico or nada, myself. The moon was still pretty high and bright, tho, and the North American is a REAL dark sky object, and though not bad, the Gott with the moon was not dark enough for this target, at least for me. Third, Jerry put M27, the Dumbbell, into the eyepiece. Now that was easily visible, with plenty of rich 3D detail. One great view. Fourth and last object was the PacMan Nebula in Cassiopeia, NGC 281. And a pretty site, too. I’m less familiar with it, but one could just make out the circle with a slice in it, and star as the ‘eye’ of PacMan. It was upside down (this was a dob, you see), but was nice and novel for me.

After that, my scope was finally set up. Again, after Jerry found it, I put in NGC 457, the ET Cluster. Jerry’s was richer, with more stars, but my 4″ refractor still did a nice job on the “phone home” man himself.

Jerry put NGC 6826, the Blinking Planetary in Cygnus, in the eyepiece early in the evening, starting things off on the right track.

The Double Cluster looked good in everyone’s scope. That’s just one nice find.

We looked at M31/M32/M110, the Andromeda galaxy family, and this was beautiful, as usual.

Jerry found NGC 7331 in Andromeda, the galaxy that leads to Stephan’s Quintet. He first found it in the 20mm 68*, but switched to the 8.8mm. That light bucket of his collects so much light it looked MUCH better in the 8.8mm. Not common with many galaxies.

The Ring Nebula in Jerry’s XT10i-with-ES-8.8 eyepiece was ‘da bomb’. Really nice and 3D-like. And M13 was also just fantastic in the same optical combination. Yawz’r! 3D popping, baby!

M8 and M20, the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae of Sagittarius were again, great in Jerry’s XT10i with the ES 20mm 100*. I found NGC 6544 and 6553 going the wrong way while trying to pan from the Lagoon on up to the Trifid. But the Trifid was spectacular! One could see the internal dark cloud markings that give the nebula its name. Very nice.

Tom split Almach, a colorful double in Andromeda, and proceeded on to Mirach and Mirach’s Ghost (elliptical galaxy NGC 404).

Last night’s star party at the Gott was a wonderful evening under the sky. Even with a crescent Moon, the band of the Milky Way could be seen stretching all the way from Scorpius to Cassiopeia. And dark dust lanes were easily visible near the region of Cygnus, high overhead. Even the skyglow from nearby Lubbock couldn’t compete with the glory of the stars.

Sagittarius and Scorpius refuse to be blotted out by the Lubbock light pollution.

A well-rounded variety of scopes were present, including refractors, reflectors, and Cassegrains.

A lot of favorites were seen, including planets (Saturn, Mars), galaxies (Andromeda, Little Andromeda, Mirach’s Ghost), planetaries (Dumbbell), nebulae (Veil, North America, Lagoon), double stars (Albireo, Almach), globular clusters (M13, M15) and open clusters (M7, M11, M39). But the highlight of the night was Comet Jacques, easily seen in the same field of view as Herschel’s Garnet Star.